Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (Jason Redmond/Getty Images)

Microsoft powers past Q4 earnings and revenue expectations

Double-digit revenue growth in its cloud and productivity businesses helped push revenue 18% higher.

7/30/25 4:06PM

Shares of Microsoft surged after the company blew past fiscal fourth-quarter earnings and revenue expectations.

Shares were up 7.3% in recent after-hours trading.

The tech giant reported revenue of $76.4 billion, up 18% year on year, surpassing Wall Street estimates of $73.86 billion. Earnings per share came in at $3.65, compared with analysts’ expectations of $3.37, according to FactSet.

Breaking down the results by the company’s businesses:

☁️ 🤖 “Intelligent Cloud” (Azure, server products): $29.9 billion in revenue, up 26% year on year
📝 📊 “Productivity and Business Processes” (Microsoft 365, LinkedIn, Dynamics): $33.1 billion in revenue, up 16% year on year
💻 🎮 “More Personal Computing” (Windows, Xbox, Bing): $13.5 billion in revenue, up 9% year on year

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said demand for cloud computing and AI was powering the company’s strong performance:

“Cloud and AI is the driving force of business transformation across every industry and sector. We’re innovating across the tech stack to help customers adapt and grow in this new era, and this year, Azure surpassed $75 billion in revenue, up 34 percent, driven by growth across all workloads.”

Capital expenditures for the quarter were $17.08 billion, compared to analysts’ consensus of $17.84 billion. The company had forecast an increase from the third quarter’s $16.7 billion.

Microsoft’s Azure cloud business grew 39% year on year.

For FY 2025, total revenue was $281.7 billion, up 15%.

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Oil settles Friday at highest level since start of war

US oil prices moved higher in afternoon trading Friday, sapping strength from the stock market as they posted their highest close since the start of the Iran war.

After another day where the Strait of Hormuz was essentially closed to global tanker traffic, US futures for West Texas Intermediate settled up 3.1% at $98.71 a barrel for an 8.6% weekly gain, per Dow Jones data.

American officials have discussed using the US Navy to escort tankers through the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman, but have said plans for such convoys are not ready yet. However, it is unclear if military convoys would bring an end to the war-related dislocations in the oil market.

“It could help,” Tom Liles, senior vice president of upstream research at energy consulting firm Rystad, told Sherwood News in a recent interview. “It could also go in a lot of different directions if a Navy ship is hit or if a tanker is hit.”

Oil Posts Weekly Gains As Middle East Conflict Drags On

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Stocks post third straight week of losses as Brent crude surges above $100

Stocks wiped out early gains to close lower amid the ongoing war in Iran.

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Memory stocks rebound off last weeks losses

Memory stocks Micron, Sandisk, Western Digital, and Seagate Technology Holdings rose again Friday, putting these crucial providers of chips for AI inference work on track for big weekly gains after last week’s steep losses following the outbreak of war with Iran.

There’s no obvious trigger for the move higher for these shares this week, other than a bit of a recovery in the AI trade more broadly — AI beneficiaries like IT cable and connections maker Amphenol and custom chip and networking company Marvell Technology clawed back some gains this week — perhaps due Oracle’s earnings earlier, and some mean reversion to boot.

Micron is due to report earnings after the close of trading on Wednesday, with the company catching a couple price target hikes this week, including one from Wedbush on Friday.

Sandisk is something of a different story, as its enormous gains over the last 12 months — roughly 1,200% — have made it a momentum play beloved by the retail crowd.

It was up about 20% this week at around 11 a.m. ET. And its nearly 170% gain this year keeps the stock on top of the S&P 500, in terms of price performance.

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The S&P 500’s internals are awful... while it’s still less than 5% from its record closing high

The breadth of negative momentum within the index’s constituents is even worse than at the tariff-induced market bottom in April 2025.